Intolerable
by missparker85
Summary: There were nights still that Dana Scully slept with all the lights on.


There were nights still that Dana Scully slept with all the lights on. Nights where the sky was so vast and dark that the thought of extinguishing her lamp and becoming just another speck in that endless sea of black was too much.

She'd spent a lot of time in the dark. Hours in a car trunk, tied up in a closet. She could still recall the taste of old, dirty rags tied around her head to silence her – grease, grime, her own blood. She'd lost more than time and dignity. She'd lost jewelry, chunks of her hair, urine down her thighs into the fabric of her dress slacks. The first time, she was sure she would die. She prayed for death. It was no past she wanted. She wanted wedding pictures and grand children, not the shame of kidnappings and murders.

The second time, Mulder came. The third, the fourth, the times after that. It became a waiting game – how long must I have my arms wrenched behind my back, my gun just out of reach until he comes? Mulder always came. After the rescues and the police reports, he would drive her home. He would let himself into her apartment with the key she'd given him and help her out of her coat and into a hot shower. He would make her tea and put her to bed and he would sit up all night in her dark living room with his gun in his hand.

The idea of going to sleep alone in her apartment was sometimes intolerable. He knew that of course, and when she would wake up in fits, she could always listen closely and hear signs of him. The low murmur of the television, the crack of sunflower seeds, the sound of her refrigerator door falling shut. The flush of the toilet. The whirring of her computer coming to life, shutting down.

Mulder could navigate her apartment better in the dark than in the light.

Once, early in their partnership, she couldn't sleep – couldn't even drift off. It was after the Pfaster case, where she'd been chained to a radiator or left in a closet, and he'd burst in at the last moment like a hero in a comic book. He'd done all the right things – the shower and the sweat pants and the promise of companionship from another room. But she'd been younger then, greener, and when he'd shut off the light and closed her bedroom door, she'd erupted into tears so fierce it was paralyzing. Those had passed and she'd just felt lonely.

When she'd opened her bedroom door, she found him sitting on the floor of the hallway.

"I heard you crying," he said, looking up at her.

"I…" she didn't know what to say.

"Scully," he said, standing, unfurling his long arms and legs. She'd already hugged him once tonight and this time he did not open his arms and invite her in. He just stood, loomed over her in the darkness and watched her with his big, green eyes.

"Will you make me a fire?" she asked. He nodded emphatically. It was something she wanted, a physical task he could do with a result they could see. By her fireplace there was a small stack of wood and starter logs and he even remembered to open the flue. She sat on the striped sofa and watched him. She was in a pair of ratty sweats and an even rattier sweatshirt. Her hair had dried naturally in to big, unflattering waves. Mulder was still in his suit, unshaved and ruffled. Mulder still looked good after three days without sleep or shower. Some mornings she hated him for it.

Not right now though. She watched him place the logs; he draped his tie over his shoulder and lit a long match. Before long, the room was poorly lit with a decent fire and she'd opened a bottle of wine and poured them both a glass.

"I should have…" he said.

"Don't do this," she said, shaking her head, looking at the red wine in her glass. "There isn't any point in should haves."

"Okay," he said. He didn't sit, but stood across the room holding the glass she'd handed him. He didn't care much for wine but he drank it because she did. Because she'd poured it for him and handed it to him with great authority. "Is there anything else you want?"

"Sit down," she said. "Over here, next to me."

He'd never really heard her speak to him in such a clipped, decisive way and so he obeyed without much thought. When he was sitting next to her, she pulled the blanket from the back of the sofa and draped it over them. She scooted closer and put her head lightly against his shoulder. She just wanted to feel not alone.

"Better?" he asked.

"Improved," she conceded. When she closed her eyes, she could still see him looming over her, she was still afraid of losing her fingers snip by horrific snip. Mulder's breathing was steady and even and she reached up and loosened his tie, unknotted it and slid it from around his neck. "This is not an attractive tie, Mulder."

"Surprisingly, that doesn't bother me," he said. He smiled softly when she laughed and finally relaxed, settling into the cushions and sometimes laying his head on top of hers. They watched the sun rise through her windows, that day.

These days, when she was closer to forty than thirty, falling asleep in a bright room felt like failure. Her relationship with Mulder had no description, no basis for comparison. When she thought of him, she thought back. She remembered him in hospitals, in rental cars, running down dark, slippery alleys with his gun in front of him. She thought of him before Antarctica, before he went away and came back and went away.

When he was still hers.

Life without Mulder was intolerable, unbearable, impossible and yet she did it every day. Go to sleep at night, get up in the morning, her life a gaping, endless hole. She thought about him in her sleep, making breakfast, chasing the waves from her hair with the flat iron. She didn't know how to live with out him, but he was already gone.

In the waiting room of yet another hospital, during the birth of Bill Junior's fourth child, she was sitting with her mother.

"You're so quiet," her mother said, her aging hand on her daughter's knee.

"Just thinking," Scully promised.

"About?" her mother prodded.

"One time I spent six hours tied up in the trunk of a car," she said, honestly, unwaveringly. Mrs. Scully looked away, tilting her head.

"I know," she said. "I remember."

"I've been left in closets. Tied to radiators. Shot. Abandoned. Drugged. Kidnapped. Abducted," she continued.

"Dana," her mother said, glancing around at the other occupants of the waiting room.

"This is what I think about," Scully said. She did not say that she thought about Mulder. There was no point in putting words to something that was so obvious.

"We all live the life we are given," her mother said, philosophically. Scully didn't respond and soon Bill came out to announce a son. Scully had given birth to a son, once, but it seemed like ages ago. Years and years.

"Congratulations," Scully told her brother.

That night, she'd double locked her door and made sure each window was closed. She checked her answering machine for messages and there were none. Her phone held no voicemails and her e-mail inbox no unread letters.

Every night she reminded herself that Mulder was gone and every morning she woke up, her disappointment just as acute as eight hours before. Occasionally, on sunny days, she called in sick to work and drove to the park across town to watch the children play in parks or on school play grounds. She liked to look for little boys with green eyes; she liked to watch them climb the back of the slide or swing across the monkey bars.

She liked to revel in what she'd lost.

Scully had given birth to a daughter and to a son and now she had nothing to show for it. No family, no wedding ring, no tall husband or strollers or white tennis shoes lined up in a row by the front door.

Sometimes she slept with the lights on, because she was scared of small dark spaces, because she was afraid of being alone, because she wanted to let the world know that she was home all through the night, should anyone decide to come back to her.


End file.
